sigil_z

[NickNeck]

Hi @doorgan

I have a proposal for a sigil.

defmodule Sourceror.Sigils do
  defmacro sigil_z({:<<>>, _, [string]}, []) do
    ast = Code.string_to_quoted!(string, file: __CALLER__.file, line: __CALLER__.line)
    {ast, {:_zipper_meta, [if_undefined: :apply], Elixir}}
  end
end

That ~z could be used while traversing with a Zipper.

  def traverse_fun(~z/{:|>, _meta, args}/ = zipper) do
    ...  
  end

instead of

  def traverse_fun({{:|>, _meta, args}, _zipper_meta} = zipper) do
    ...  
  end

Advantage

• focus on the ast

Disadvantage

• no highlighting for the ast in ~z
• the function definition becomes more complex

What do you think?

[doorgan]

Hey there! Thanks for the suggestion!

I see the appeal to it, but I'm not sure the sigil justifies the tradeoff considering it saves just a few characters, and that we're replacing the zipper metadata matching with the sigil invocation.

I'll give it some more thought and get back to you :)

[NickNeck]

Hello, I completely agree with you. I am also not sure if this is a good feature. The problem is that any developer will understand the matching with a zipper-tuple, but the z-sigil in a definition could be weird. On the other hand the z-sigil makes things a little bit more readable. For now I tend to leave it out. But I wanted to hear some other opinions on this.